Penguin Speakers Bureau
Biography
Sydney Finkelstein, author of WHY SMART EXECUTIVES FAIL, is an expert on strategy and leadership, and is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He is widely known as one of the top authorities in his field. His department is the highest rated at Tuck a …
Read moreSydney Finkelstein, author of WHY SMART EXECUTIVES FAIL, is an expert on strategy and leadership, and is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He is widely known as one of the top authorities in his field. His department is the highest rated at Tuck and has helped to propel Dartmouth’s Tuck School to near the top of recent business school ratings—including the number one spot in the most recent Wall Street Journal ranking.
Sydney is director of the Tuck Executive Program and a leading figure in worldwide executive education. He created the highly successful Strategic Leadership Program for senior executives at the Australian Graduate School of Management. He has taught in executive education programs in Mexico, Finland, England, France, Italy, China, and Vietnam, as well as throughout the United States. He has also served as a consultant and speaker for numerous leading companies around the world, from Deutsche Bank and Glaxo to American Express and Boeing.
Sydney offers that rare combination of world-class presentation skills and leading-edge content that leaves audiences both challenged and exhilarated. Participants in previous seminars have described his programs with such terms as, “the best educational experience of my life” and “incredible examples and insights that opened my eyes in ways I had never considered.” Every year Sydney gives talks throughout America and Europe. He is able to address a wide range of audiences in an entertaining fashion, but is prized above all for the depth and authority he brings to the subject of business breakdowns. His audiences are constantly clamoring for his latest discoveries and are eager to have them in printed form.
Sydney’s articles have been published in the Harvard Business Review, Strategic Management Journal, Organizational Dynamics, Journal of Business Strategy, and other leading business journals. He received the Academy of Management Award for Best Article of the Year in 1997, and an award from McKinsey for an article on boards of directors (2002).
Check out Sydney Finkelstein’s website at www.whysmartexecutivesfail.com.
Speaking Topics
- Why Smart Executives Fail … and What to Do About It
One of the most remarkable findings from WHY SMART EXECUTIVES FAIL is that the underlying reasons for failure in many of the mid-1990s business breakdowns—whether it was Motorola’s inability to shift from analog to digital technology or Rubbermaid’s apparent refusal to respond to the increasing power of big-box retailers like Wal-Mart—repeated themselves in such seemingly different arenas as the dot-com blowups and even the recent corporate scandals. In this speech, which is also the basis for a one- or two-day workshop with special applicability to an individual client, Sydney identifies the four destructive syndromes behind these disasters, and outlines a series of steps companies can take to avoid the same fate. Hot off the press, this speech is based on his six-year study of corporate failures in over fifty companies.
- “Irrational” Strategies and How to Fix Them
In the late 1940s and 1950s, major league baseball opened their doors to African American ballplayers, yet one team refused to adapt. The Boston Red Sox were the last major league team to integrate, despite the fact that almost all their competitors improved their win-lose record almost immediately after adding black players. Remarkably, we found exactly the same pattern of adopting “irrational” strategies and failing to adapt in dozens of companies we studied. Key decision makers knew exactly what was happening in their industries, among competitors, or in customer circles, yet they failed to respond. Instead, they often continued with the strategies of the past, or adopted even more inappropriate policies to address the challenges they faced. Why do companies adopt such “irrational” strategies? What are the different types of organization mindset failures that serve as guideposts for disaster? How can executives ensure that they don’t fall into the same traps? This speech brings together a wealth of research evidence, and literally dozens of real-world examples, to demonstrate how irrational strategies emerge and how to fix them.
- The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful People
Is it possible to pinpoint just what makes smart, previously successful people go wrong? The answer is yes! Again and again, whether CEOs, senior executives, or mid-level managers, the same “bad habits” kept appearing in the failing companies we studied. These spectacularly unsuccessful habits include such seemingly positive leadership characteristics as a belief that one can dominate one’s environment, total commitment to the goals of the company, and stunning decisiveness in the face of uncertainty. In this speech, Sydney demonstrates how such apparently beneficial habits are actually destructive when left unchecked, and offers an alternative view of leadership that has applicability up and down the management hierarchy.
- Early Warning Signs for Management Meltdowns
Wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow know in advance when something bad was going to happen? Of course we can never know with complete certainty, but in the course of studying more than fifty business failures, some of the same activities and attitudes seemed to predate business disaster. Sydney summarizes these markers for failure, how to observe them even if you are an outsider to a company (something of clear value for investors), and what to do to stop the train before it derails.
- Creating Breakout Strategy
How many companies live in a world of back-and-forth market-share battles, with marginal improvements in business prospects followed by troubling setbacks, simply unable to get untracked? How many companies are “just there,” in the game but not really? On no one’s list of great companies, but harboring aspirations of breaking through to become a player, a leader in their marketplaces? In this speech, Sydney describes the strategic secrets of success of companies like Harley-Davidson, Cirque de Soleil, Apple, Starbucks, Boston Beer, and Dyson.
- Making Mergers and Acquisitions Work
While smart executives have failed during many different business activities, if there was one area that was fraught with the greatest dangers, it would be mergers and acquisitions. Sydney has been studying and consulting on this topic for more than ten years, and he brings a wealth of experience to the table. This speech, which he also offers as a one-day workshop with more time for hands-on application to a specific client, gives audiences a road map of what to consider and how to do it from the point of first considering what a potential acquisition candidate should look like all the way through to the fine points of integration.
Featured Book
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WHY SMART EXECUTIVES FAIL
"A jargon-free business book that offers genuine insights with clarity and sometimes even wit....It should be required reading not just for executives but for investors as well." —The Wall Street Journal
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